Bravo Duck

We used to never place them, but we wound up with some from some routes that we purchased. These locations have been good long-term moneymakers. Most of them are attended so there has not been very much vandalism. If you are unsure I would take some equipment that you do not have very much money in, chain it to some chairs inside and see what happens.

Locating is the key to the bulk vending business. If you are not someone who is willing to go cold call 10 to 20 businesses in a day, this business is probably not for you. Think about that before you take your next step.

I am interested in your route planning service. I tried to look up route online.com and did not find anything. I wanted to see what criteria it uses for planning routes. Please provide a link if you have one. We have approximately 800 locations and have been thinking about re-ordering them for more efficiency.

That is a Wizard Spiral, they are good machines. They have a Beaver coin mech. That one needs a good cleaning so you will need a special bit that has 2 prongs to take it apart. They are kind of a pain to disassemble and clean, but they can bring in the quarters in the right location. A fairly high volume location that has kids is ideal for that machine.

We tried 10 cases of Nitwits which is oak leaf's version of runts/rascals. There was a significant drop off in sales. Some or all of this drop off may be attributed to the labels . We are going to try unlabeled nitwits in the future to see if sales are affected.

Where are the pinball machines?

8 quart Cambro white plastic tubs, available at restaurant supply stores work very well. Edited to add: the square ones.

He wants out, you want in, agree upon a price, pay him and be done with it. After your deal he never wants to think about candy machines again. When I buy a neglected route the first thing I do is swap out all the equipment for nicer clean equipment. This does two things, 1. It shows there is a new Sheriff in town and 2. With a swap out you're only in the location for like 60 seconds so there isn't much of a chance for the location owner to kick you out over the previous persons poor performance. You'll still get some kick outs, but hey that's a part of this business. You should try to get the route for $2500-3000 based more on his desire to be out more than the actual value, maybe fall back to $3500 if you really want to take on this project. If it's been six months since he serviced there could be $1000 in the machines.

Rustoelem Safety Red spray paint matches Northwestern machines very well, it's a little brighter than Oaks and Eagles start out. I get mine from Lowes. I just read Osrd's reply above and agree, if you're going to paint then paint the whole part.

A cast iron stand and a Triple Play stand will both work for a single Super 80, I have many on location.

Dump the Dubble Bubble. You're big enough to get free shipping from Sweetworks (Oak Leaf) at 500#, that works out to 33 or so cases. You can also buy many pressed candy products from them. Your main gum should be Bubble King. Your secondary gum should be Nerds, It's a competitive advantage when heads up against other gum vendors and does well in most retail locations. The softest best tasting gum out there is Ford. It's available to non Ford distributors under the Carousel brand. The only trouble is you have to order a lot of it to get free shipping, 120 cases. 85 cases for a $50 flat rate shipping, which is practically free. With Ford you can order cases of Skittles, Runts and other candies to fill out your order. Barb Deleon is who you talk to when ordering Ford products, 847 955-0003 extension 2858

Run away.

Value, $80-100 for a 2 or 3 column in good shape. $100-140 for a 4 column. Flat vending is great but streaky, something is hot then it dies. You end up with some dead product.

That is a 3 column A & A Advance sticker machine. They're great machines, soon A & A will be the only sticker machines on my routes, I like them that much.

The stand you're talking about holds 4 Oak Cabinet heads stacked 2 and 2. They're hard to service and a pain in the butt. On the plus side 4 heads fit in the same space as 2.